


If One Of Them Is Dead (The Two Can Keep A Secret Remix)

by melannen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-14 18:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7185605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So yeah, actually, probably," Sharon said. "That is <i>exactly</i> what Aunt Peggy would have done."</p>
            </blockquote>





	If One Of Them Is Dead (The Two Can Keep A Secret Remix)

**Author's Note:**

> This is post-CW; the character death warning is for extensive references to the canonical offscreen death of Director Carter.

After Sharon destroyed her career and her life, she went to a farm in Iowa. She ate a lot of macaroni and cheese, helped a small child color a lot of pictures of superheroes, did some yard work, and spent an entire afternoon laying flat on her back on the moss under a grove of oak trees, watching the sunlight filter down. She felt like there was something she should be doing, or rather she felt like there _should_ be something she should be doing, because there always was. Except— hiding out at a safehouse was the only thing she should be doing; pretending she could go out and be SHIELD again would just add more layers of complexity that the people trying to untangle the mess didn't need.

"I feel like I've spent my whole life trying to live up to Aunt Peggy," she told Laura Barton, in the evening, folding laundry after the kids were asleep. "And now I-- now that's all just empty space."

"Well," Laura said. " _Did_ you live up to Aunt Peggy?"

"I helped wanted terrorists escape U.N. custody and provided them with classified information and weapons to aid in their continued operations," she said. " _And_ I kissed Steve Rogers into the bargain." Because at that point, what was there left to lose? And she at least deserved that much of the story. "So yeah, actually, probably. That is _exactly_ what Aunt Peggy would have done."

"You think she never had to take some time off?"

"This isn't exactly taking time off, Laura! I burned everything behind me. I'm _done_."

"Sharon," Laura said. "If you were done, you wouldn't have picked _here_ for your safehouse."

This was true.

The Barton farm was as safe as it was possible to be, for an agent of SHIELD (even one who was technically not SHIELD), because nobody who knew about it would dare make Laura Barton angry at them. But it wasn't exactly secret, at least not secret at the levels that Sharon was moving in these days. Had moved in all her life, really, courtesy of Aunt Peggy. There was a joke-not-a-joke that Laura was the secret-keeper for the upper echelons; she had the clearance and if the Bartons trusted you enough that you knew about them, then they were safe enough for anyone.

Sharon had met Laura the first year she was an agent, in November. She'd been scheduling her duty shifts for Thanksgiving, because while she knew she had a standing invitation to Aunt Peggy's table - all of Aunt Peggy's old cronies, and all of the up-and-comers in the agency who she wanted to keep an eye on, would also have an invite. And there was no way that none of them would make the connection to Peggy's brother's kid if Sharon was there too.

Agent Barton found her on the Wednesday before, doing paperwork in the main office. "No family to visit for the holiday?" he asked her.

She'd met him mostly in passing a few times; she thought he made an effort to keep an eye on the newest field agents, and he was always friendly. HQ was nearly empty the day before the holiday, but somehow she wasn't surprised to see him there. He gave the impression of a man who was very practiced at being alone. "None I can visit. You too?"

"Yeah," he said. "But apparently I've finally earned an invite to Director Carter's legendary shindig, so I'm sure _that_ 'll be a good time."

"Must be nice," Sharon said, trying to force the impression that she could never dream of such an honor.

"Well, it means I can't use this plane ticket I bought to check up on the old family farm," he said. "Ï wonder if you'd be willing to go out there instead, just make sure nothing's fallen over, that kind of thing."

It was a strange request, and Sharon wasn't sure how to turn it down - Barton was already becoming a legend in SHIELD, known to have the ear of Fury himself.

So that was how she met Laura Barton, and learned that she wasn't the only one keeping family secrets outside their files. And wasn't the only one who sometimes spent holidays on an anonymous farm in Iowa instead of with a family she couldn't admit to, while Clint had to be somewhere else, missing yet another moment at home.

Laura had become a great resource after that, in the practicalities of how to be someone who had never had an aunt the way Clint was someone who had never had a wife. And later, she'd become a friend. Nobody would come looking here to arrest Sharon, nobody would dare even if they wanted to, but there were plenty of people who knew that it might be a place to look.

"Sharon," Laura said, "I suspect that when it's time to go back, they will find _you_. And while you wait, take the time to mourn whatever way you need to. It's a privilege not everyone gets."

****

"You weren't at Director Carter's funeral," Maria said as she stepped onto the elevator in Stark Tower, and Tony nearly jumped out of his skin. He'd been alternating visits with Rhodey and updating his prosthetic designs since he got back, with orders that nobody was to see him. And here Maria had somehow appeared in his private elevator anyway, ready to corner him in that vulnerable transit time between the hospital and workshop. She must have gotten to Friday somehow. Friday never did have JARVIS's common sense. And now they were trapped together until they were below the garages and he could cut her off at one of the security doors to the workshop.

"There were other things occupying my attention at the time," he said, "as you might have noticed if you watched the news or whatever."

"I know you weren't there," she said, "because I was running security, at the personal behest of Stark Enterprise's CEO, who also paid for the whole funeral, by the way. She said Carter had been family, and it was the least you do for family."

"Maybe I wanted to give Captain Rogers the chance to mourn in peace," he suggested.

"Because a deep respect for others' personal boundaries is the hallmark of all your interactions?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"Why do you care?" he exploded finally. "It's not like I knew her that well. A couple times a year at Dad's terrible parties, cards at birthdays and Christmas —"

"Family summers in the Hamptons, long letters at school—" she shrugged. "I had to read all her files to manage security at the funeral," she said. "Standard procedure."

"When I was a kid, maybe. Last thirty years? Radio silence. And you're going to say I cut _her_ off, but she sure as hell could have made some effort to convince me otherwise."

Maria winced. "I think she already suspected that what happened to your parents was deliberate, that there was some kind of rot in SHIELD. She was probably trying to keep you out of it."

Tony laughed like it hurt, which it did, because he still had broken ribs. "Fat lot of good that did. I didn't even know SHIELD goddamn _existed_. Dad's old war buddies my ass."

"They were trying to keep you safe. They always kept an eye on you. Did their best to keep the dirtiest stuff away from Stark Enterprises."

"They can fuck right off. So can you," he added, locking the lab door in her face, because whatever she'd done to Friday, she hadn't been able to keep the elevator from taking him back to the lab, and even Friday hadn't earned those overrides yet. 

****

"No," Maria said, her voice blurred over the phone line's deeply paranoid encryption, which in context of the mission Nick had given her, meant 'no, Tony Stark is not going to achieve new heights of emotional maturity and suddenly start dealing with death and tragedy without spiraling into another breakdown.'

"Damn," Nick said.

"On the good news end," Maria said, "I don't think he's any _worse_ than he was a month ago, when he was trying so hard to pretend everything was fine and he was fine and he'd spent millions of dollars on a holodeck because he was ready to be over it? You remember. He's been forced to admit that he's not fine. His coping mechanisms can't be any _worse_ now that he's at that point. Admittedly he probably could have gotten there without almost provoking world war, but—"

"But it's Stark," Fury continued.

"It's Stark," she agreed. "Romanov could probably have pulled more out of him, she was always better at this kind of infil than I was."

"And was she better at the emotional crap?"

"You could have gone yourself. Sir," she pointed out. "I couldn't help noticing you weren't at Director Carter's funeral either."

"Wasn't I?"

"No. You weren't. Give me _some_ credit for being able to do my job, Director."

He chuckled. "No. I wasn't. It didn't seem like— a productive use of my time."

"I know you cared about her," she said. "And Stark, for that matter— you watched over that boy as if you were Uncle Nick as sure as she was Aunt Peggy."

"Carter never asked for much in the personal line," he said. "And Stark grows on you. Like that weird electrochemical fungus they found in South America, that gives you mood swings and shooting pains in the ass. Besides, Hill, if I start being loose with those kinds of family secrets at this date, I might as well retire for real."

"I'm pretty sure Stark already knows you care about him," Maria said. "I'm pretty sure you've said it to him. In those words exactly." _Possibly the only person you have said it to that cleanly_ , she thought, not bitter at all. "If that's a family secret, cat's out of the bag."

"Hill, my family secrets have family secrets."

"Like that wife you sometimes allude to that nobody has ever seen or heard any record of, and you only mention when you know nobody will believe you."

"No wife. Completely unattached, as of now," Fury said. "You can put that over the official grapevine, if you want," and he hung up on her. God _damn_ it. Even Nick Fury had to get tired of secrets eventually.

****

Natasha found Steve not at Peggy's grave, as one might have expected, or his mother's, even, but Bucky's mother's. Of course.

"Hey Steve," she said.

"Hey Natasha." He barely looked up.

"Having a fun day out?"

"Oh, it's a thrill a minute," he said, and did turn to look at her then. "What are you doing here, Nat?"

"Can't just drop by a friend's mother's grave?"

He rolled his eyes.

"I thought you might be feeling a little bit lost," she said. "Maybe mourning some dead. Maybe mourning some that aren't dead but make you just as angry."

"Maybe I'm finally realizing that I'm not the only one who had a long and complicated legacy to deal with."

"Kid, don't we all," Natasha said.

He gave her his most irritating grin. "You? I thought you were grown in a vat. No complications at all."

"Ha ha," she said. "Also, too soon. Also, you know enough about SHIELD to know that we're taught to keep all that under cover for a reason."

"A reason like an evil supervillian trying to manipulate you into destroying each other by pulling on those strings?"

"Sure. That's one example."

"I do understand about keeping that kind of thing secret—" 

"Steven, no offense, but you couldn't keep who you care about a secret even if it was to win a bet with Stark. It shows all over your face, and then you try to take them out dancing in the daisies."

"You're funny," Steve said.

"Although, speaking of," she said, "You might want to remind Tony that we all still have those strings to pull. He has a tendency to try to convince himself that they only go one way. He might listen to you." 

"Sure," he said, eyes hooded. "Is that all?"

"Well, how have you been? Haven't heard much."

"You know. All right. Me and Sam and the others, keeping busy, doing our things."

"Talked to Clint lately?"

"Why?"

"There's someone staying with Laura who you might want to talk to. Has a lot in common with her, in terms of secret families and things."

Steve was quick on the uptake, had to give him that. "Are you still trying to set me up with Sharon?"

"I'm trying to tell you that one of the best field agents I know is still in the wind, and you might want to do something about that." He looked thoughtful. "Although I hear Nick Fury's single, so if you want me to set you up with him instead, you need to make your move while you still have a—"

Steve blushed red. "Shut up, Nat," he said. "And— thanks."

She waited until he'd left and she'd doubled-checked the area herself before she went back to the grave. She felt stupid, but, well, it seemed to help Steve. "Hey," she said. "Mrs. Barnes. We never met— at least, I hope we didn't— and if we had, you probably would have hated me for a lot of good reasons. But— you taught your boy to love, so well that he remembered how to love even when he'd forgotten everything else. And you taught him how to _teach_ love, which is even harder. Aunt Peggy told me once how he—" she stopped. "Well. Just for that one story from Aunt Peggy, the world probably owes you more of a debt than anyone can ever know. So. Thanks. Just— let this little talk be our secret. Yes? I wouldn't normally presume, but there's only two of us and you. Well. You have the same clearance level as Carter, at this life stage.." She turned around, shook her head at herself. "I need a coffee."


End file.
